Of diets, sweet and a little sour

Phew it’s over; that incubus that was imposed upon us has passed. As I have no way to tell what will happen as while all the sturm und drang was happening I was in Paris as our embassy there organised an exhibition of my watercolours for the greater delectation of the Pari­sians, I was mercifully detached from the inevitable hysteria and hurling of invective which, sure as eggs are eggs, are an integral ingredient to the omelette or, rather, scrambled egg into which the government had transmogrified the divorce issue.

I have come to the realisation that I must have a predilection for eggs as I seem to use so many egg-related idioms whenever I write, possibly because I am a passionate cook and now a deprived gourmet. My inherent, or should I say, familial, diabetes, precludes me from being a true follower of Goacchino Rossini and unless I deliberately opt to move from type 2 to type 1 diabetes mellitus and be insulin dependent I have to watch everything I eat.

I have been in the Mater Dei Hospital loop for well onto two years and, were it not for these regular blood tests and check-ups, which are carried out with impressive efficiency, I would have probably been unaware of the way this silent disease was progressing and ended up badly as I indulged, always a little bit more, in just a little bit of this or a little bit of that, till, wham, it hits you when you are least expecting it and one’s eyesight starts to blur or a little cut on one’s toe becomes gangrenous. People who do not take this national disease seriously are fooling only themselves. One can swallow a truckload of pills but unless it is supported by diet and exercise there is a limit to how effective they can be.

At present, having been warned how close to the edge I was teetering, I am realigning my lifestyle and revising my cuisine putting the family recipe for timpana and ross il-forn firmly under lock and key and concentrating on making so-called healthy foods as appetising as possible by being inventive, a humongous challenge and one that will entail creativity and experimentation.

Mater Dei also goes one step further by organising seminars to help people to live with this disease on a day in day out basis. I know from personal experience how, at the beginning, the diabetic regime can be fun, especially when it also means a slimmer and younger-looking persona for whom, for once, shopping will be a real endorphin-filled therapy and not a nightmare. As time goes by, however, boredom sets in and one becomes increasingly careless and slipshod and, before you know it, the sugar count reaches astronomical levels. Unless the regime becomes a lifelong commitment, diabetes remains a nasty time bomb. In fact, we diabetics are comparable to suicide bombers as with each violation we are playing Russian Roulette with our own lives.

It could always be worse; much worse. At the end of the day most cases of type 2 are due to bad diet and indulgence rather like gout, however, unfairly there are people who drink copious amounts of red wine and do not suffer from gout and there are people who never touch sugar and suffer from diabetes as there are people who smoke like the power station who are as healthy as the most dedicated athlete! There seems to be no sense, no rhyme or reason as to why this is so but I can assure you that it’s all in the genes. This is why stem cell research is so important.

With diseases like diabetes ever on the increase it would be criminal not to encourage further research into the genetics of illness once the means to do so is there.

When I know that two out of five of you who are reading this today will in some way experience diabetes either now or in the future the importance of research along with a very visible campaign to encourage people to look after themselves is incredibly important. Public awareness of diabetes should not be restricted to the diabetic himself and those around him. I seriously think that with so many diabetics around restaurateurs should invest in a diabetic cookery book and provide meals in their menus that are suitable for diabetics. There is a general lack of what a diabetic diet is that is sometimes laughable. I was once served a diabetic meal in France consisting of four hard-boiled eggs and a dozen tomatoes while the rest of the group indulged in duck carcasse, which is barbecued bones that are not, in modest quantities, forbidden.

On Air Malta, my diabetic meal is always a source of wry amusement as it appears that, despite my not having anything sweet, I am also denied butter or cheese, which, in modest quantities, is not harmful to diabetics. In fact, because of lack of information, the very idea of ordering a diabetic meal strikes terror into people like me as what usually results is nine times out of 10 utterly unappetising if not disgusting.

I sincerely believe that the ongoing campaign by the Ministry of Health should be boosted by the Diabetic Association, which, at present, concentrates too much on type 1 diabetics and by the media in a collective effort to raise awareness to not regard a diabetic as a second-class citizen who can be fobbed off with an undressed lettuce leaf!